Another step to becoming more social

I hate meeting people. Not just that I hate making small talk or trying to think of interesting things to say or ask, but I get physically sick and start sweating when faced with having to meet new people. At parties, I'm the person who watches more than gets involved with any conversations. If I know a bulk of the people, then it's a different story and I'm quite outgoing. This has led a lot of people to be very shocked when I admit that I'm an introvert instead of an extrovert. "But how can you be a teacher?" is the question I get when I admit my shyness. Teaching is a different beast from having to be in a social setting, and teaching also doesn't faze me. I sometimes get nervous the first day of class, but I can overcome that quickly. Plus, since almost all of my classes all the time are online, it's not something I have to deal with that much.

The reason I say this is because when I first read the assignment to "tie the worlds together" and meet someone or a group of people I don't know or knew of ahead of time, I felt the familiar surge of anxiety in my stomach right away. I think I spent a whole day just mulling it over in my head and getting freaked out. I was totally convinced that I would not be able to complete this assignment, but I also get overly anxious about uncompleted tasks, so it was a battle of the wills.

During this time, I started talking to Kelly from class. I was chatting with her on google chat one night about my hesitation with this particular assignment and we decided that maybe it would be good practice to meet in person. Kelly lives in the next city over from me, so it seemed like why the heck not? We decided to meet at Tyler's Taproom over by the Durham Ballpark. It was sort of strange, but I knew who she was right away without having to go through any of the cheesy "I'll be the one with the carnation in my buttonhole" things. We hit it off right away since it turns out that we both enjoy fancy beer and soft pretzels. We had a lot of things in common, so it was very easy to talk to Kelly, and the initial anxiety I have from meeting new people was fleeting. I was a little more hopeful that I might be able to complete the assignment without ending up giving myself a heart attack.

I invited Kelly to join myself and a friend of mine for a geek session where we basically crack out our laptops and grade papers or work on other things (usually involves me surfing weird blogs). My friend took a picture of Kelly and I so I would at least have something to write about if I chickened out on the assignment.

The three of us had a good time basking in the warming glow of free wi-fi. Kelly and I discussed the assignment further and my friend mentioned meetup.com and said that we would be able to find a group for anything (and boy, she was right). It was easy to create an account, and I just stuck to using the same information that I used in most of my profiles. Kelly and I surfed through several pages of everything from Wiccans to single-mingling groups before we stumbled upon a meetup for The Apex Fitness Walkers & Social Club. They were just a group of people who met every couple of weeks and walked around Apex Lake.

This was good for two reasons: 1) Both Kelly and I were familiar with Apex Lake. It's a lovely area and a fairly easy walk. 2) It's a very public location, so if this group was crazy or whatever, there would be the benefit of other people around. Since Kelly and I felt it would be easiest to do a meetup group with each other (safety in numbers), we decided to signup for the March 20th walk.

One of the features I really liked about meetup was that after I RSVP'ed to the event, I was given the option to add it to my facebook postings. So, after I added it, I received several comments and others of my friends that said they might be interested in something like that in the future. I also left a comment on the group's meetup page just to let them know that I was new to all of this and looking forward to the walk.

Leading up to the walk, I was sent reminder emails periodically and I could check the page to see what the numbers would be. There ended up being 22 people who had given a definitive "yes" to attending this walk. We ended up finding out that this was the 2nd largest group turnout in the two years that this group has been active.

We were given a specific location to meet the group in a reminder email, so it was pretty easy to find everyone. The organizer of the event introduced herself to us right away and took attendance.

We all went around and introduced ourselves, and just like that, we were off in a pack.

The weather was perfect for a walk, and getting out and doing something the first day of spring made me excited for the nice weather to come. During our walk, we got to talk to Pat, the organizer, who told us a little bit about the group. We told her about class assignment. We also chatted with various other people in the group about things from weather to dogs (of which there were several on the walk). I have to say that the 2.5 mile walk was over before I knew it. It's amazing how fast the miles go as you are chatting with people.

In the end, maybe it was good that I got out of the house and met some people that I knew nothing about besides a few postings on the group discussion board. I probably would have spent the day inside working on schoolwork or cleaning, and I would have missed out on the chance to see the beautiful weather and meet some new people. This is a group that I could see myself being part of regularly, but this wouldn't have been possible without the step out of my comfort zone. Perhaps meeting people off the various social networking sites is not a crazy idea as I initially thought. And maybe the saying "Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet" can be applied to this situation: "People on the internet are just friends you haven't met yet."

(Our walking group Saturday, March 20th. Kelly and I are in the back row with sunglasses)